


re: lightning (in retrospect)

by wordswithdragons



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang (Avatar)-centric, Gen, Sozin's Comet, background mentions of platonic zuko&katara, implied Kataang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29503125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswithdragons/pseuds/wordswithdragons
Summary: Aang and Zuko talk about lightning, post war.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 37





	re: lightning (in retrospect)

**Author's Note:**

> set immediately after Aang defeats Ozai, but before Mai and Zuko reunite in the epilogue portion of Sozin's Comet

“You didn’t kill him.” 

It’s quiet at the Fire Nation palace. It’s late, too, the courtyard filled with moonlight, and Aang thinks Katara would have a fit if she saw the way Zuko limped towards him—saw that either of them were out of bed at this hour when they, in her own words, “desperately need rest,” and she'd held Aang like she would never let go again after the battle—but Aang is a waterbender, too, and the moon fills him with hope.

It’s the first night since he beat Ozai and in the morning, the news will reach everyone else. One last night, technically, to be Aang instead of just the Avatar.

One more night, too, for Zuko to be Zuko, instead of Firelord in the morning, so Aang just shuffles over as he sits beside him. The scarred boy is still wearing bandages under his red robes and Aang remembers the tightness of them well.

“No.” Aang watches the moonlight glitter over the turtle duck pond and then glances at him. “Are you mad?”

“I would be,” Zuko says gruffly, “if it meant he’d snuffed you out.”

Aang can’t quite manage a laugh but it somehow lightens the mood. “You’re sure you should be out here now, Your Highness, instead of getting your rest?”

“Not you too,” Zuko grumbles. He’s never had someone fuss the way Katara does—Sokka has had to fend her off a few times lest he blow his fuse. Zuko’s fingers almost scratch idly on the bandages over his heart. “I just wanted to see if I could, you know, walk.”

“I get it,” Aang says. “Recovering from lightning isn’t fun.”

“And I saw you out here from my window,” Zuko reveals, looking at him. “I wanted to come apologize.”

“Apologize? What for?”

“I didn’t understand before, what I was asking you to do.”

Aang’s spine straightens. _Okay, Guru Goody-Goody. This isn’t air temple pre school, it’s the real world._ Mocking glue-bending, which had turned out more or less to be the key (just with energy, not glue). “You could learn to respect Air Nomad beliefs a bit more,” he agrees, a tad sullen. He knows it was the product of 100 years, if not more, of Fire Nation indoctrination, but it still wasn’t pleasant.

“No, that’s not—” Zuko grits his teeth and then turns sheepish. “I mean, that too, but I meant... I’m sorry, for saying you had to kill him with lightning. I watched you get hit in Ba Sing Se, but I wasn’t thinking, I—I _couldn’t_ understand it, until...” His fingers curl over his bandages.

Until you feel the lightning blow open every vein in your body with excruciating body, until it rips through you and leaves an aching husk in its wake. Aang knows Zuko only caught half of it, the other redirected, but he still knows that any of it is beyond painful. His friend experienced more than enough.

And yet still less than him.

Aang wets his lips, unsure of what to say. The wind blows gently in his ears, guiding him home to an answer. “Yeah,” he admits. It’s safe to be open and honest here, even if he’s never said it out loud so frankly before. Maybe it will even help Zuko too. “Dying by lightning isn’t fun.”

Even Zuko’s scarred eye widens. “You _died?_ ”

“Yeah.” Aang stares out into the courtyard garden, the grass swaying slightly under the breeze. Young monks used to be instructed to be the leaf in the wind, a childhood lesson interrupted by giggle fits and silly face. The Air Temples will always be emptier than the Palace. “I would still be dead, if not for Katara.”

Zuko’s hands grip the stone steps they sit on, knuckles turning white. “I’m _sorry,_ ” he says hoarsely.

“It wasn’t pretty,” Aang says. Maybe he’s needed to say it all along. “I was in a coma for a month and I could barely walk when I did wake up, and... it took weeks for the pain to go away. Even now, there’s a tingle at the base of my spine, like...”

“It’s still waiting to leave?” Zuko says knowingly. More than enough.

Aang leans back on his hands, arrows pointing true, and inclines his head towards him. “Yeah. But hey.” His eyes meet Zuko’s and softens. “Least we match.” 

Zuko grunts and rolls his eyes. “Opposite sides,” he mutters, as though unsure of what to do with the offered silver lining.

Aang smiles. “Even better, don’t you think? Like it went through you—” He places an index finger, just briefly, over his friend’s bandages. “And out through me.” 

“Wrong order too,” Zuko says, but more of a mumble as he thinks it over and perhaps, finds it an apt allegory. The Avatar can’t change what people do, what the Fire Nation has done, but he can take the burden and redirect the energy, perhaps. Just a few more times. Zuko sighs. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Aang’s smile widens. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Me too.”


End file.
